Opening a Brewery: A Year in Review

A year in review for has to start with expressing the thanks to the insane amount of building work that has been undertaken, turning silly ideas, pictures into reality is fundamental to our being! Then the friends who’ve contributed in many ways, Eddie at Harbour Brewery, Nick, Richard at Magic Rock, Eddie at Gadds’, the Chaps at Windsor & Eton, Kevin at Cervesa Marina and we’d not be here without the immense support from Cave Direct and Simply Hops.

We are incredibly excited to be a part of an established beer scene here in Dover. We were glad that we were able to open our doors in 2016, but what we are most excited about is what’s to come. Our goal is to continue to produce high-quality beers and to further refine our brewery as a truly community oriented operation in which we want all of you to be a part of.

Although we are only a little over a month old the support from the community has been great and we expect that it will only grow with time, hurdles being hurdles we’ll have new opening hours from January 3rd!

Looking forward to 2017, we are excited to continue to expand our line-up and offer some fun things at the brewery. Without doubt the persistent opening and growth of British and global brewing enterprises is heart-warming, but we’re mindful to not be “just one more brewery”. It’s exciting times to be a brewer today, even last night people lining up at the our bar to drink our beer does wonders for the soul. Reviews have been favourable, which is a genuine relief. Our beers will be going in two directions, looking outward to the bleeding edge of beer around the world, but minded that there is an immense brewing history right under our feet and in the town we call home. Digging into those archives, recreating as best we can those beers will give us a real live look back at what beers were drunk in Dover, way back.

We are looking to have nice opening bash, some tap take overs with esteemed friends and collaborators, a series of explorative collaborations with friends near and far a spring release/food truck festival; scratching that itch brewing with lots of hops, barrel aging of beers, and several charitable events to raise awareness of causes that impact our local community. We’ll also be hosting a homebrew competition, brew a beer, enter it, if it wins come and brew your beer on our brewery – and then bring friends down to enjoy the winnings!

2017 the year IPA jumps the shark? Nope. Hoppy beers will still be the biere du jour, but the exploration of different textures, flavours and aromas with diverse hop profiles. We’re also going to be exploring the grains we base our beers on will be built upon. We’re moving away from the ubiquitous clean American ale strains, in search of different complexities that different yeast strains offer.

We are also excited to begin ramp up production with an eye on distribution and to increase the presence of high-quality, locally ade beer at your favourite bars and restaurants. Be sure to let your favourite establishments know that you would like them to carry local beer. We’ll (finmgers crossed) be having beer on tap just across the water. We truly appreciate all of your support!

Thank you again for your continued support and stay tuned for exciting things to come. Happy new year from the Breakwater Team.